At a 540,000-square-foot factory in Seymour, Indiana, Guardian Bikes is tackling a unique challenge: producing children's bicycles stateside. The company says it can produce about 12,000 bikes per week, a manufacturing feat that has become increasingly rare in the United States.
“Going back to World War II, almost all bikes sold in the United States were domestically made,” said Brian Riley, co-founder and CEO of Guardian Bikes. “By the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, that was all gone.”
Over the past four decades, many U.S. factories have closed as production moved overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor and a larger network of suppliers. As global trade barriers fall, the number of U.S. manufacturing companies and factories fell by 25% between 1997 and 2023, according to the World Resources Institute.
Today, as companies like Apple, IBM and Johnson & Johnson commit billions of dollars to U.S. manufacturing and politicians call for reshoring, Guardian Bikes offer a glimpse into the possibilities and struggles of “Made in America.”
“It was never easy,” Riley said, “even being in the red for a period of time.”
Guardian Bikes has relied on Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the past to produce products to the specifications they provide. But long shipping times and quality issues prompted a shift in strategy.
Starting in 2022, Guardian is opening its own factories in the Midwest, backed by $19 million in funding from JPMorgan Chase. Riley said the higher costs of domestic production are offset by automated production, lower inventory costs and, in some cases, tariffs.
"In the latest tariff environment, our costs are starting to be on par with (overseas production), and in some cases, domestic parts are even cheaper than imports from China," Riley said.
But building a domestic supply chain from scratch is no easy task. Many parts, such as bicycle chains and reflectors, are no longer manufactured on a large scale in the United States.
Experts say finding input suppliers is one of the many challenges companies face in bringing manufacturing back to the United States. At the same time, countries such as China and Vietnam have become manufacturing giants and have invested more in factory construction and talent training.
Even with new tariffs and federal subsidies under the CHIPS Act, some economists remain skeptical that the United States will truly achieve a "manufacturing renaissance."
“Think about how much higher the price would be if sneakers, cellphones, or any item you buy in a retail store were made in the United States,” said Colin Grabow, associate director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy at the Cato Institute. “So we should all be happy to see goods produced in the most efficient way because that lowers the price we pay and improves our standard of living.”